When I was referring to RNG in 5.0, I meant "if you got absolutely abysmal RNG to the point where Fireball was higher on your spell DPS than Pyroblast", RNG. And yes, if you got THAT kind of RNG, you definitely wouldn't be placing unless your fellow raiders were complete shit, or vastly outgeared you (and back then, my raiders were quite good; hell most of them still are, but that's beside the point )

I said 30-50% was during 5.0. It's no longer the case, but RNG is still a great factor. If you don't see Fire's flaw in being super-heavy RNG, then you're the one who's misinformed.

Like i said, you must be doing something wrong, because i never had fireball be above pyro. never. And i think 11 hours /week and 100% attendance is enough to weave out lucky rng. Sure i had pulls where i would just not get crits to align with procs, but it was still not game breaking. And there is plenty(considering our gear disadvantage as we fall behind in progress) of raiders in my guild ranking top 50 so that is besides the point as well.

Like i said, you must be doing something wrong, because i never had fireball be above pyro. never. And i think 11 hours /week and 100% attendance is enough to weave out lucky rng. Sure i had pulls where i would just not get crits to align with procs, but it was still not game breaking. And there is plenty(considering our gear disadvantage as we fall behind in progress) of raiders in my guild ranking top 50 so that is besides the point as well.

Then you've been lucky and yet to have one of those awfully dreadful RNG pulls.

Trust me, they happen. If log didn't get deleted, I'd dig to find one. Hasn't happened in ToT yet, but it definitely has in T14.

Like i said, you must be doing something wrong, because i never had fireball be above pyro. never. And i think 11 hours /week and 100% attendance is enough to weave out lucky rng. Sure i had pulls where i would just not get crits to align with procs, but it was still not game breaking. And there is plenty(considering our gear disadvantage as we fall behind in progress) of raiders in my guild ranking top 50 so that is besides the point as well.

I'll just leave this here.

Just running a quick simcraft for DPS on my profile (fire) and yours (frost was the active one), over 100k iterations each, you can see that:

Fire:
The minimum dps for fire is ~82.29% of the median expected dps.
The median dps for the sim compared to the top simulation is ~77.95% of the best result.
The minimum dps is only ~64.15% of the best result

Frost:
The minimum dps for frost is ~89.82% of the median expected dps.
The median dps for the sim compared to the top simulation is ~87.01% of the best result.
The minimum dps is only ~78.16% of the best result

But I'm not sure why you're even arguing against. Fire feels the swing of RNG much harsher than the other 2 specs. Fireball above Pyroblast on the dmg breakdown is rare these days, and doesn't happen after you get 2pc T14, and from that point on in gear anyway you'll have decent crit and spellpower that pyro will scale well beyond it that it shouldn't happen, but any mage that's played fire at low levels of gear or just had a shitty hand dealt on a pull can tell you that sometimes your DPS can vary a big chunk and it's all completely out of your hands.

I'm not saying this doesn't happen to other specs or classes, because it does, but it will be hard for you to find one that is more prone to these effects than fire, specifically because of the love-hate relationship it has with Crit Chance.

The most annoying thing now is it's not always up at the start of the fight for your first Combustion. Had 5.7% uptime last night (compared to 26% thursday) and one 6:30 wipe with 1 proc. Also saw it double proc a few times which was frustrating.

Doing some farming last night, had a 3.6 % uptime on Durumu (1 proc the entire fight) and 30 % uptime on Primordius (5 procs - we were single target nuking for the meta-achi so no multidotting / aoe affecting things).

This will be just lovely watching the wild swing to dps according to when that thing decides to proc and when it doesn't. Hate it already. Feels great to know I've spent all that time grinding rep and quest items to get this while others in the raid benefit much, much more.

And Blizz said:

"Also, for clarification, we are explicitly not using legendary meta gems as a form of balance tuning knob. We’re balancing specs without the legendary meta gems, and we’re also balancing the performance gain of the legendary meta gems. Players will have a variety of gear levels, and we strive to balance them all."

I could see a re-balancing happen. I've toyed with simulations across the physical and caster one. It seems a bit off for the average caster specs.

The weekend's over. We could hear from Blizz today or tomorrow. They've got the entire weekend's worth of logs to see if it worked out properly. Be patient.

---------- Post added 2013-04-22 at 04:58 AM ----------

Originally Posted by Summer

And Blizz said:

"Also, for clarification, we are explicitly not using legendary meta gems as a form of balance tuning knob. We’re balancing specs without the legendary meta gems, and we’re also balancing the performance gain of the legendary meta gems. Players will have a variety of gear levels, and we strive to balance them all."

Hence the spec coefficients. Are you broken without it? No? They've done what they said they'd do. Did you fall behind others who got it? No? Well shit. I know it reads oddly, but you can't possibly imagine that everyone would have equal uptime? There'd be no sense to it.

Again though, I could see a change. We'll see what the new week brings. Blizz does tend to want things to feel fun at least at some level.

Hence the spec coefficients. Are you broken without it? No? They've done what they said they'd do. Did you fall behind others who got it? No? Well shit.

The way I read that is, each spec should benefit about the same from getting the gem. This is obviously not true.

I don't see fire mages as broken at all and never said so; just feel that this proc rate is a fail in terms of game design and the stated purpose of the gem (to be an equal boost to all specs).

Just wanted to post that blue post since so many people are saying that the metas are plain and simple used for class balancing whereas GC would seem to be saying they aren't. If they aren't, it's very hard to understand why we need to have such a low proc rate that it gets questionable whether we should even use the damn thing, while at the same time some of the other dps in my raid just jumped a fair bit o getting their meta.

The way I read that is, each spec should benefit about the same from getting the gem. This is obviously not true.

It'd be hard to make it true, as well. I agree they clearly failed that idea, as of current anyway, but I have to think that they just abandoned it part way through development due to the nigh impossibility of making it equal. The melee one has a fair variance as well, and it's essentially a static proc. We've got a buff that changes quite a few specs when it procs. That can be really hard to balance; see Unerring Vision vs demo.

I'll agree that the design has failed. They're not as blind as players tend to think, though. They just don't post shit on weekends. I would be greatly surprised if there wasn't an adjustment in the works, because I agree, 4 procs a fight is a bit stupid. I just hope one of the changes is an ICD equal to duration. I might be getting 3 PPM, but it sure as shit likes to chain in the first few seconds...

You'd have better luck in the fire sticky up top. I was under the impression that the set bonus was also multiplied by CM?

It does so for pyro its (41.6-3+5)*1.3= 56.68. CM makes it 6.5% increase to pyro crit.

To add to the chorus of the meta is not fun I had some instances last night where I got no crits the entire duration so I only really benefited from an extra strength mage bomb and an extra fireball (and a half maybe). It is very frustrating to have RNG play a larger role than before in my damage with this thing.

At the same time 3% more crit damage would have yielded (18367760+13553469)*.03=957636.87. This translates to ~2% damage increase.

I would say the Legendary does come out ahead overall because of simplified math on my part but it still shows two points:
1. RNG is a larger factor than ever
2. The legendary gem is a very marginal upgrade over the regular meta

Why is a gem that takes months of raiding and questing so close to a gem everyone can get? Why even invest the time and gold when there is no reward? Its just not fun in the current situation. I think there is a problem.

"Also, for clarification, we are explicitly not using legendary meta gems as a form of balance tuning knob. We’re balancing specs without the legendary meta gems, and we’re also balancing the performance gain of the legendary meta gems. Players will have a variety of gear levels, and we strive to balance them all."

Yeah , I guess that's why moonkins get 10 times our uptime on the meta gem , even though they benefit from haste more than we do.
GG blizz. At least try to be honest and say you suck at balancing.

Scroll down to the second "blue" box, and get to the Mage one. Read the third line. It reads the following:

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

• The Fire Mage 4T15 bonus is before Critical Mass. Net increase to your Pyroblast's crit rate will be +6.5%.

---------- Post added 2013-04-22 at 12:12 PM ----------

Originally Posted by Summer

"Also, for clarification, we are explicitly not using legendary meta gems as a form of balance tuning knob. We’re balancing specs without the legendary meta gems, and we’re also balancing the performance gain of the legendary meta gems. Players will have a variety of gear levels, and we strive to balance them all."

Interesting, and yet we're seeing an 8% uptime while others see up to 60%+.

You guys still think we should be nerfed, or suffer a huge uptime penalty?

I am NOT asking for a 50-60% uptime, I just want to be treated fairly with at least a 20-25% like it was pre-hotfix. Moonkins and Elementals can keep their near-perma Heroism. I just want to have a procc line up with Heroism every now and then ;_;

I am NOT asking for a 50-60% uptime, I just want to be treated fairly with at least a 20-25% like it was pre-hotfix. Moonkins and Elementals can keep their near-perma Heroism. I just want to have a procc line up with Heroism every now and then ;_;

This is exactly the argument we should make to devs. It just is not a fun or rewarding mechanic. I really could care less about other classes; should only cite their stats for comparisons.

This is exactly the argument we should make to devs. It just is not a fun or rewarding mechanic. I really could care less about other classes; should only cite their stats for comparisons.

*nods*

People think I was godmode DPS, but no, I just want to be treated FAIRLY. If they want, they can make ALL other speccs 40-60%, and keep us at 25%. Scale EVERYONE upwards if you don't want to "give Fire a buff". I just don't want to be left behind.

On the other side of the coin, don't nerf us to "compensate for the legendary". I don't see why we even NEED a nerf atm.

Like I've said multiple times now though, I've been banned from official forums and can't post a thread. Someone else needs to (and don't put it in "Mage" forums because they don't read class forums)